


Welcome to the Deadlock Gang

by Zeible



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:35:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23533168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zeible/pseuds/Zeible
Summary: Sombra ends up crossing Reaper one time too many, and finds herself on the run from Talon. She ends up taking refuge with a certain outlaw woman. At first, she thinks she's got a place she can weather the storm, but soon finds things getting complicated...
Relationships: Elizabeth Caledonia Ashe/Sombra | Olivia Colomar
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Welcome to the Deadlock Gang

**Author's Note:**

> Editing this thing was a freaking NIGHTMARE.
> 
> Guys. Never, ever write something several thousand words long down on paper and then think you can just make it digital by using a speech to text program.
> 
> It won't end well.

Sombra loved this kind of job. Not because it was challenging-the compound's security system was, frankly, almost suspiciously bad. It wasn't because it paid well since this place was a Spartan as could be. It wasn't even because she would finally be making some major progress at dealing with the global conspiracy, the one she dedicated her life to taking down. (Or at least some of her life.)

No, she loved this kind of work because it was going to piss Gabriel Reyes (AKA Reaper AKA Goth Subtlety Edgelord) right the hell off.

The hacker grinned as she saw the little circle detailing her progress finally fill up. She heard the pleasing little 'click' of an electronic lock coming undone. Gently, she slid the door open and peeked inside. With a quick spray from her aerosol to confirm that the laser wire had been undone, she was right in the door.

This whole base screamed 'abandoned project' to Sombra but that wasn't surprising; Gabe's little cover story for this place (To the rest of Talon, that was. To the public it didn't exist at al)l. He built it as temporary living space while he was spending a few months lying low, only for it to prove unnecessary when another, more comfortable safe house was suddenly made available.

Of course, in reality she now knew it was a place he could deposit _sensitive_ information that would prove his connection to the secret global conspiracy she was trying to undermine. The whole cover story was just a transparent ruse to explain it's existence.

The place was a simple and practical linear layout, too. She briskly walked past various abandoned rooms (including a suspiciously comfortable looking coffin, hmm...) towards the real treasure. The archives room, the veritable treasure trove of info. Her source (Some of Gabe's personal files she'd gone to great lengths to uncover) had indicated that this was going to be a bit of a mess, apparently deliberately, so to ensure nobody who didn't know what to look for could find a valuable ie incriminating files.

When she opened the door she saw she hadn't been wrong; the files were loaded into some old cobweb covered filing cabinets, many of which had rusted over. The whole thing looked like it hadn't been touched in years, but with her careful eye she saw a small patch of clear dust in the floor a few feet away from the cabinet.

Cracking her gloved hands, Sombra dug her nails in around the faint edges in the false flooring and yanked it up. She did so gently, so as to not leave too much evidence anything had been disturbed.

Beneath the false floor was a little brown box, not terribly covered in dust, filled with little files. They weren't labeled, so Sombra sighed and began rapidly scanning every one of them and storing the newly-made PDF copies (They were search friendly, too!) of all of them. She couldn’t really read them now, since they were dense and the lighting provided by her flashlight was hardly ideal.

That done Sombra carefully put them back in and closed the little box. She then placed it back into the false floor and sealed it again, double checking to see if she hadn't dispersed the dust too badly. Satisfied that Gabe wouldn't notice a thing, she happily Translocated away, satisfied that she might finally have her first proper lead on the faceless conspiracy.

In her enthusiasm, Sombra completely failed to notice the little black device that had been watching all of this from the corner of the room. Several hours later, a smoky phantom entered the building and grabbed the little thing. It carefully extracted ithe small card it had stored all the footage. The phantom chuckled; he had a feeling he'd find the footage on it _very_ interesting. Very interesting, indeed...

* * *

_75 miles away at a location not too far outside Phoenix, Arizona..._

* * *

Elizabeth Caledonia Ashe considered herself a patient woman. She was trained to understand the benefits of delayed gratification. More than once she’d had to wait weeks, months, or even years for something she _desperately_ craved.

Patience, though, was a hard thing to master when bullets were flying in your direction.

“SVEL! HOW MUCH LONGER?!” she screamed at the blonde haired woman furiously working at the nearby computer terminal.

“I don't know! I didn't expect this level of security!” Sveltana's voice mostly just betrayed panic and uncertainty, but there was definitely a hint of petulance under all that.

Ashe snarled as she took another shot with her Viper, blasting apart another of the Omnic guards this whole heist had been Fubar since they got here.

It was supposed to be simple. Ashe would escort, Sveltana, their new hacker into the warehouse's offices disguised as people hired to fix some bugs in the security system. B.O.B. and some of the boys would do a stick up at a bank (Never a good real target but fabulous ordering the police away from where the real Target was several Towns over drawing all the cops in the county well away from the real place

That real target was the private warehouseman eccentric British millionaire who stored many of his most valuable treasures, here guarded by an army of illegally reprogrammed Omnics. Part of Ashe had _really_ just wanted to undo their brainwashing and set them loose. It’d teach that rich bastard a lesson, for _sure._ In the end though, she hadn't been able to find a way to do that _and_ get her treasure.

Treasure always beat principles in Ashe’s book.

The trouble had started when Sveltana produced their false IDs; she had given them both Latina names. Now, Ashe was perfectly fluent in Spanish. Growing up one mile north of the border (And having a _T_ _ejana_ tutor who gave her more attention and respect than her actual parents) led to that sort of thing. It gave her full command over the language, so faking a bit of an accent made them believe a woman named Blanca De La Cruz could certainly be paler than Lestat.

Sveltana, on the other hand, looked and sounded thoroughly Russian no matter what language she spoke. It had been sweat inducing for Ashe, watching the surprisingly attentive security guard eyeing “Lucia” skeptically as she and “Blanca” (Blanca? Really?) explain the purpose of their visit in technical terms that had gone over both of their heads. Luckily her supervisor been a lot more by the book and stupid (Though that went without saying) and thus had let them in regardless of how suspicious they seemed.

Unfortunately, either that guard had gone over her supervisor’s head or Svel had tripped security once she got into the system, because some alarm went off and now the whole warehouse was in chaos.

Ashe had brought her Viper along, of course. It was concealed as equipment, which to her didn’t really seem plausible, but hey security guards were usually pretty stupid. Her scattergun had been concealed within the false skirt she wore. Her usual endless supply of dynamite, of course, all getting in its special spot. All that though could only last them so long, as hordes of Omnics poured into their wing of the warehouse and Svel struggled to find the location of Ashe’s desired item.

All this just for collection of century-old DVDs. Sometimes, Ashe hated her obsession with that old Calamity Jane cartoon...

Well okay, there were also some priceless artifacts and they were worth tons of money. The gang had _never_ been hurting for cash though, especially after they knocked over that train last month. Hadn’t made up for her bike, though. Damn that Jesse McCree. Him and his insufferable grin.

Svel had been all eager to do this, too. She was new to the gang, and convinced she could hack _anything_.

And Ashe had believed her.

God that seemed so stupid now. The girl was utterly lost with whatever she was struggling on, and if she hadn't been so furious at her Ashe might have been moved to pity

Right now though she was mostly just busy screaming and shooting. The actual guards- all human- had naturally fled and she knew how to avoid permanently killing an omnic. All the same this had been a mess. She hated resorting to a backup even if that backup- violence- had to be her very favorite and best talent.

Suddenly, one of the Omnics tossed something into the room. A very quick glance told Ashe it was a grenade.

“Take cover!” She shouted at Svel, following her own advice by throwing herself behind the thick wall of an adjoining room. An ear-splitting explosion rocked the little room and Ashe peeked head around the corner. Hopefully spell had heard her and-

She drew in a breath as she saw that know the girl had either failed understand her or had been unable to find cover her body lay there twitching and spilling blood from 100 little holes where the shrapnel had hit her she was still alive but wouldn't be for long and couldn't be safely moved in time

Ashe swore bitterly and surveyed the hallway. The Omnics clearly stopped firing only to conserve ammo where the grenades hopefully did the work.

She’d repay them in kind now, not caring very much if she knocked any of them permanently offline. Reaching into her secret storage spot, she pulled out a stick of dynamite and lit it's fuse in one fluid motion.

With practiced elegance, Ashe threw the explosive down the hallway. She took stock earlier of the cover behind which the guards were likely hiding. Once the stick head hit the sweet spot, she let it a shot with her Viper. The dynamite exploded in midair, catching all the concealed Omnics in the blast. Little pieces of half-melted metal flew around the hallway, and she heard electronic screams.

God. What sadist designed these things to feel _pain_?!

Either way, her path was cleared for now. Ashe sped down the hallway, ignoring the havoc all around her. There was no way she could get her target items now. The outlaw knew when to run, and the moment of gang member died was the moment a heist needed to be called off.

She vaulted over the guard gate and flung the door wide, racing to her and Sveltana's little getaway car. Damn dinky little thing wasn't good to look at, but it was definitely reliable.

Ashe floored it out of there and switch the hands-free radio on B.O.B. B.O.B. come in

Silence greeted her at first as B.O.B. picked up. Then, the familiar voice of one of the gang members came on.

“Hey boss, it’s Jebediah. I'm here with B.O.B. we pulled it off just fine! Not much of a haul, but-"

She cut him off. “Sveltana's dead.”

“What?! How?!”

Ashe gritted her teeth. “She overstated her capabilities rather _severely._ The guards killed her. I let them know how we _feel_ about that sort of thing in the Deadlock Gang.”

A brief silence. "...understood, boss. What do you want us to do?"

Ashe sighed. "Get back to the Hideout. I'll take the scenic route."

With that she turned off the radio, and switched it over to some of her very old timey music to clear her head. She let herself get lost in Kacey Musgraves then-rebellious lyrics as she headed back down the refurbished historic Route 66...

* * *

_At_ _a hidden apartment just outside El Paso, Texas later that day.._

* * *

Sombra sighed. She went over the files with a fine toothed comb all day, but either Gabe was a master of ciphers or all she had found was his junk box. All the files were completely unrelated to _anything_ Talon got up to; Old FBI reports, maintenance logs for some old machine she doesn't recognize one thing about, and other miscellaneous junk.

There had to be _something_ good in there. Nobody went to all that effort to hide junk like this.

With an exaggerated groan, Sombra got up from the bed and away from her laptop. She had her usual tank top and shorts combo on for relaxing at home. This _wasn’t_ home, of course nowhwere was, not anymore. It was pretty damn sweet, though ; a two floor apartment with rent control courtesy of Talon. It had all the luxury Sombra had never enjoyed when she was a little girl living in Dorado, and still _leagues_ above the kitchy joint Los Muertos threw together.

Sombra headed down to her stupidly swanky and _very_ purple (Like everything else around here) kitchen. She set to work making herself dinner to quell her mutinous stomach, and put the kettle on while she made her tacos. Sombra considered what kind of code someone like Gabe would use to conceal something he desperately wanted hidden. He wasn't especially stupid, so it wouldn't be anything too easy. Then again, he was a man who really held onto things, which was exactly the kind of weakness that led to someone using something obvious to anyone who knew their history. What did she know about Gabe...

Then it hit her. She had it, she had the cipher! As if to punctuate her realization the tea kettle started whistling she quickly switched it off and pulled out a cup for a self hurrying up back to her bed with the tacos and her tea

She furiously entered the search terms related to a few common names, all insignificant in the grand scheme of things but valuable to Gabriel Reyes (Even now that he was Reaper). Terms like ‘Morrison’, ‘Jesse’, and a dozen other random words that she'd learned about while going through his files. Gradually (like hours later, this was still a complicated cipher even with that thread to pull on.) she started putting it all together.

It was a good thing she finished off her tea earlier because she would have spit it out if she had still been drinking it

_**You're not as clever as you think, Colomar. I've got you this time.** _

* * *

_Aro_ _und that same time, at a Talon base hidden under New York Harbor..._

* * *

Doomfist tapped his mechanical fingers on the table as he pondered the footage Reaper had just presented to him. At present, they were the only two talent in her council members in the meeting room and the only other one of the facility was off in her lab as usual sometimes Akande wondered why exactly Moira wanted a leadership position if she what's so uninterested in using it

“Well?” Reaper said, standing nearby Doomfist, his arms folded and tapping his foot impatiently.

Akande sighed, pinching his brow. “All right so she broke into your safe house and grabbed...what, exactly?”

“Nothing in there had value because I _knew_ she was going to do it. She thought that she was getting,” he laughed mirthlessly, “Secret files proving my allegiance to some ‘evil conspiracy’.” Reaper apparently couldn’t resist the urge to put up airquotes around the words ‘evil conspiracy’.

The much larger man sat up, looking down on his much shorter peer. He folded his hands behind him and seemed to read Reaper’s body language before responding.

“Let's leave aside the fact,” Doomfist began slowly, “That a globe-spanning conspiracy is hardly the kind of thing you or I should dismiss out of hand. You're telling me you think we should remove this _highly_ talented and for the most part reliable operative all because you _deliberately_ set her up.” He left out the fact that Reaper had _also_ done so by leading Sombra to believe he was a mole for some larger organization, which is something he’d hope _anyone_ in Talon would want to uncover if true. Reaper was certainly playing a dangerous game here, planting evidence he was a traitor to get someone he was annoyed with kicked out.

Reaper shrugged. “She shouldn't have been following that kind of lead. She only got it by hacking my personal files.”

Doomfist resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “This is striking me less as Potential Threat and more Workplace Drama...”

“You know that's not all there is to it, Ogundimu.”

“I know about the incident at Volskaya Industries, and I already told you I don't particularly care.” He remembered Reaper coming to him, groaning about Sombra’s ‘failure’ to kill Katya Volskaya- which had been an operation he hadn’t really approved of in the first place. Learning she was blackmailing Volskaya hardly lowered his opinion of her; in his mind, it just proved she was competent enough to work for him.

The black-clad man spun around on his heel, petulantly stomping to the other side of the room. When he spoke again, he did so with a quiet fury that would have left any lesser man shaking.

“She's unstable, unreliable and she's digging around in the files of a Talon inner council member. I wasn't happy when she was brought on board, and _nothing_ since then has given me any reason to think she's anything more than upjumped gang member with an inflated opinion of herself!”

Akande stroked his chin. “That does seem like a familiar situation for you...”

Reaper laughed coldly. “Yeah, it does. Besides, Akande...Talon weeds out the weak. If she can't pull her weight- and lately she _hasn't-_ _s_ he shouldn't be here.”

“Fine! I agree she needs to be put to the test if we keep her but I don't approve of a summary execution. I'd rather wait and see if she pulls off some more serious breach-”

He heard Reaper’s phone buzz, and the man pulled it up to the side of his hood. He held up a clawed finger for silence while responding with a lot of ‘Uhuhs’ and ‘Oh really’. After whatever was said by the other person he put the phone back in his pocket and (probably) smiled.

“Looks like she just gave us that more serious breach. Our little Hacker’s gone off the reservation...”

* * *

_Several hundred miles away from El Paso and moving fast..._

* * *

Sombra kept swearing under her breath as she sped down the highway. Her car was thankfully alone on the old desert road. Now that she thought about it, she’d kind of lost track of where she was going.

Part of her dimly thought that maybe this had been stupid. All she really knew was that Reaper was on to her (Which admittedly was terrifying in itself) but Reaper didn't run Talon all by himself. If he was mad at her, it was very likely that no one else terribly cared. God knew he wasn't winning any popularity contests with the rest of Talon any time soon.

Of course, that was all immaterial now. After stuffing all her valuables into her fastest car, she set a few viruses into Talon systems to hopefully scrub their data on her. They would _also_ probably stymie their efforts to track her down. Lastly, she’d some (And hardly all) of her embarrassing videos on them...

Yeah, she’d just burned that bridge and burned it _good._

The next question came to mind as she faintly tried to even recognize where in the southwest she was now. All these places north of the Rio and east of the Rockies tended to blend together for her. Anyway, that question was _where the hell was she supposed to go_.

She certainly couldn't go to most of her safe houses. They _had_ to be compromised, and if they weren't they soon would be. She didn't have any powerful friends outside of Talon, either. Maybe she could go back to Dorado, but after Zarya of all people attracted there and learned her real name in the process, it didn't seem terribly safe.

Sombra stupor was broken by the sound of a horn. In her panic, she had lost track of the road. She barely swerved in time to avoid hitting the other car, but in the process went off the road and slammed into a cactus.

Freaking out in the middle of her own freak out, somehow a curious calm came over her. Without undue haste she scanned the car from the inside, and saw it hadn't been badly damaged.

There was a sort of thunk at the door and Sombra slowly turned her head to see what had caused it. The only light came from the full moon above, but this woman was so pale she was practically glowing in the moonlight. Her long white hair had been cut into an asymmetrical bob she was dressed up in an odd hybrid of an old fashioned Cowboys outfit no more 20th century bikers get up

Oh, and she was pointing a gun at Sombra through the glass. Reflexively, Sombra thought to pull up her hackpad and disable it. She quickly knew this person would probably take that as a sign of hostility and shoot her though, and decided against it.

“Out of the car.” The woman demanded, her voice icily cool. She spoke in a drawl Sombra had only occasionally heard outside of American westerns.

She complied, holding her hands up as she stepped out the door. The important thing was to remain calm, even if Sombra had a thousand reasons to be panicking right now. She could see the other woman's car parked at the side of the road. It was apparently undamaged, so it wasn’t really clear to Sombra why she had come over here...

“Keys.” The woman said simply.

“Uh...okay.” Sombra was a little confused what was going on here. Why was someone pulling off an impromptu carjacking in the middle of nowhere? Nevertheless, she handed her the keys to her fancy and very very purple car.

“Don't know that I like the color,” the white haired woman said, earning Sombra's _immediate_ dislike “But it's nice enough for my standards.”

She gently pushed Sombra aside with the gun, apparently confident that the smaller woman wouldn't try to wrest it from her grasp. Sombra just let her slip inside, sensing her moment coming soon.

Now it was time to strike. As the woman began climbing into the car, Sombra quickly pulled out her digital hackpad and began scanning the other woman for hackable weak points. Pretty much everyone these days had _something_ vulnerable to a hack; omnic style robotic limbs, cybernetic implants like Sombra's own, or just weapons that had very vulnerable Tech.

Which is why when she scanned the woman she found something astonishing; absolutely nothing. No cybernetic limbs, no implants, nothing high tech on her person at all. Even her gun was apparently some old relic from a bygone era before computer assisted quick loading was a feature every firearm had. Even Sombra’s deliberately retro machine pistol still had that weak point so she knew it couldn't just be kit it out

“Here's the...what’re you doing...” The woman asked, and Sombra jolted her head to see the other woman was looking at her. Bemusement playing in those vividly red eyes. She was holding a set of keys- not Sombra’s, though.

“Uhhh...” Sombra said, _very_ intelligently, shutting off her hackpad almost as an afterthought.

“What _exactly_ were you just doing there?” The woman asked, sounding more curious than annoyed.

Sombra briefly considered lying, then thought better of it. “Hacking.”

The woman quirked a white eyebrow. “Hacking.”

Sombra nodded. “Yep. Hacking.”

“In the middle of the desert.” Her tone was drier than the sand surrounding them.

“Yeah, I was hoping to uh, hack you?”

The woman looked at her like she just admitted she made it her hobby to lick every power outlet she saw. Then she burst out laughing.

“Oh, oh no!” She said, wiping tears from her eyes, “Don't hack my vintage Winchester, please!”

When she finally settled down, she seemed to look at Sombra a bit more appreciatively.

“Youu got a particular reason to have that fancy equipment on you?”

Sombra rubs the back of her head feeling a strange sense of relief start to wash over her

“Well uh, hacking’s kinda my thing?”

The woman studied her like some prospector surveying an unspoiled valley.

“You any good in a fight?”

Sombra ginned. “ _Hell_ yeah.”

You got a problem with breaking the law?

“Hell _no_.”

“You got anywhere better to be?”

Sombra looked behind her, pondering that question...but only briefly.

“Nope.”

The woman motioned with her head at the passenger seat. “Get in. I've got a place in the gang for you, I think.”

Sombra eyed her briefly, curious at what this woman's angle might be. Eventually though she bowed to the logic of just taking the salvation that had been offered to her. Without another word, she went around and got into the passenger seat of her car.

The white-haired woman smiled as she did so, driving them somewhere into the West.

“My name’s Ashe. Welcome to the Deadlock Gang.”


End file.
